1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of signal processing. More specifically, the present invention relates to the processing of measured signals, containing a primary signal portion and a secondary signal portion, for the removal or derivation of either the primary or secondary signal portion when little is known about either of these components. The present invention is especially useful for physiological monitoring systems including blood oxygen saturation systems and pulserate measurement systems. The present invention further relates to a method and apparatus for signal processing of signals in order to compute an estimate for pulserate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Signal processors are typically employed to remove or derive either the primary or secondary signal portion, from a composite measured signal including a primary signal portion and a secondary signal portion. For example, a composite signal may contain a primary signal portion comprising desirable data and a secondary signal portion comprising noise. If the secondary signal portion occupies a different frequency spectrum than the primary signal portion, then conventional filtering techniques such as low pass, band pass, and high pass filtering are available to remove or derive either the primary or the secondary signal portion from the total signal. Fixed single or multiple notch filters could also be employed if at least one of the primary and secondary signal portions exists at a fixed frequency band.
It is often the case that an overlap in frequency spectrum between the primary and secondary signal portions exists. Complicating matters further, the statistical properties of one or both of the primary and secondary signal portions may change with time. In such cases, conventional filtering techniques are ineffective in extracting either the primary or secondary signal. If, however, a description of either the primary or secondary signal portion can be derived, correlation canceling, such as adaptive noise canceling, can be employed to remove either the primary or secondary signal portion of the signal isolating the other portion. In other words, given sufficient information about one of the signal portions, that signal portion can be extracted.
Conventional correlation cancelers, such as adaptive noise cancelers, dynamically change their transfer function to adapt to and remove portions of a composite signal. However, correlation cancelers and adaptive noise cancelers require either a secondary reference or a primary reference which correlates to either the secondary signal portion only or the primary signal portion only. For instance, for a measured signal containing noise and desirable signal, the noise can be removed with a correlation canceler if a noise reference is available. This is often the case. Although the amplitudes of the reference signals are not necessarily the same as the amplitudes of the corresponding primary or secondary signal portions, the reference signals have a frequency spectrum which is similar to that of the primary or secondary signal portions.
In many cases, nothing or very little is known about the secondary and primary signal portions. One area where measured signals comprising a primary signal portion and a secondary signal portion about which no information can easily be determined is physiological monitoring. Physiological monitoring generally involves measured signals derived from a physiological system, such as the human body. Measurements which are typically taken with physiological monitoring systems include electrocardiographs, blood pressure, blood gas saturation (such as oxygen saturation), capnographs, other blood constituent monitoring, heart rate, respiration rate, electroencephalograph (EEG) and depth of anesthesia, for example. Other types of measurements include those which measure the pressure and quantity of a substance within the body such as cardiac output, venous oxygen saturation, arterial oxygen saturation, bilirubin, total hemoglobin, breathalyzer testing, drug testing, cholesterol testing, glucose testing, and carbon dioxide testing, protein testing, carbon monoxide testing, and other in-vivo measurements, for example. Complications arising in these measurements are often due to motion of the patient, both external and internal (muscle movement, vessel movement, and probe movement, for example), during the measurement process.
Many types of physiological measurements can be made by using the known properties of energy attenuation as a selected form of energy passes through a test medium such as a finger, shown schematically in FIG. 1.
A blood gas monitor is one example of a physiological monitoring system which is based upon the measurement of energy attenuated by biological tissues or substances. Blood gas monitors transit light into the test medium and measure the attenuation of the light as a function of time. The output signal of a blood gas monitor which is sensitive to the arterial blood flow contains a component having a waveform representative of the patient's arterial pulse. This type of signal, which contains a component related to the patient's pulse, is called a plethysmographic wave, and is shown in FIG. 2A as a curve s(t) 201. Plethysmographic waveforms are used in blood gas saturation measurements. As the heart beats, the amount of blood in the arteries increases and decreases, causing increases and decreases in energy attenuation, illustrated by a cyclic wave seen in the curve 201.
Typically, a digit such as a finger, an ear lobe, or other portion of the body where blood flows close to the skin, is employed as the medium through which light energy is transmitted for blood gas attenuation measurements. The finger comprises skin, fat, bone, muscle, etc., as shown FIG. 1, each of which attenuates energy incident on the finger in a generally predictable and constant manner. However, when fleshy portions of the finger are compressed erratically, for example by motion of the finger, energy attenuation becomes erratic.
An example of a more realistic measured waveform is shown in FIG. 2B, as a curve M(t) 202. The curve 202 illustrates the effect of motion and noise n(t) added to the clean waveform s(t) shown in FIG. 201. The primary plethysmographic waveform portion of the signal M(t) is the waveform representative of the pulse, corresponding to the sawtooth-like pattern wave in curve 201. The large, secondary motion-induced excursions in signal amplitude obscure the primary plethysmographic signal s(t). Even small variations in amplitude make it difficult to distinguish the primary signal component s(t) in the presence of a secondary signal component n(t).
A pulse oximeter is a type of blood gas monitor which non-invasively measures the arterial saturation of oxygen in the blood. The pumping of the heart forces freshly oxygenated blood into the arteries causing greater energy attenuation. As well understood in the art, the arterial saturation of oxygenated blood may be determined from the depth of the valleys relative to the peaks of two plethysmographic waveforms measured at separate wavelengths. Patient movement introduces motion artifacts to the composite signal as illustrated in the plethysmographic waveform illustrated in FIG. 2B. These motion artifacts distort the measured signal.